


He Is Transformed

by charlesworthy



Category: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied Relationships, mostly based on this SWEET headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-22 20:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13174893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlesworthy/pseuds/charlesworthy
Summary: He enters the prince's room for a different reason, but when he finds Lyon is not there, he gets another idea.





	He Is Transformed

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily based on some headcanons that some may find canon-divergent. I hope it makes sense and you enjoy ~

He doesn't know how much time he has alone, how much time before the prince's return, so Celeste's handwriting is quick and messy. He writes down only the essentials, though his plan is only half-formed and he isn't confident anything will come from it.

_1\. The Lyon you see is not our prince._

He changed the moment he performed whatever ritual split the fire emblem in twain. Celeste remembers vividly the changed look in his eyes.

Lyon before was such a glimmering star, bright against the dark magic he wove into spells. You could see the hope in his eyes, that they'd do such good with the darkest powers. Even after his father's death, Lyon's motivations remained, as far as Celeste knew “for the people, it's for the people, Celeste.”

Celeste does not have the time to write that.

The paper he's using is a scrap ripped from one of the journals Lyon kept before. Out of respect, he turned to the next completely blank page before tearing it. He still remembers what the page prior read.

_I will be attempting the ritual tomorrow. If all goes well, Father will return and it will almost be like it was before his death. The preservation spells Celeste and I cast to keep his body should continue working even as he is risen. I will update here with the results._

Lyon can never do that.

Celeste isn't sure he's dead, completely. At times the prince has the same sparkle in his gaze, the same gentle curve to his mouth as to suggest that the Gradoan heir is truly still there. The small glimpses at things resembling what Lyon once was had sustained Celeste's wishes that something could be reversed, but after all the research he went through, doubts cloud his mind.

_2\. Lyon cannot be restored._

It hurts to write. It hurts to admit that Lyon is truly dead, gone, lost to whatever monstrosity is puppeteering his body. Celeste knows. How terrifying the demon king can be.

Before the change, Celeste had lingered at Lyon's side always. When Lyon slept in the library, because he was so invested in reading, it was Celeste that draped the blanket around his shoulders and pushed away ink wells so that the prince could not spill them should a nightmare leave him trembling.

Now, he's taken to hiding in Lyon's shadow. When Lyon does not ask for him, Celeste is sparce. He's stolen several dusty tomes from the library, and even taken some from Lyon's possession himself. He's stuffed them under his cot, purposely left his room in shambles so as to make the mess seem normal. Lyon doesn't know how fastidious Celeste is. He doesn't realize.

He doesn't anounce himself either, isn't as nearly as polite or courteous as Lyon once was. Celeste tries to be careful, but he knows he's been caught reading books about demons. The thing inside Lyon is far too clever to predict. Celeste can't know if he legitimately doesn't know his initial plans to exorcise Lyon, or if he's merely waiting to punish him for it when Celeste seems comfortable. He's so subtle in the ways he hurts Celeste now.

_3\. Do not trust him._

Other researchers made that mistake for Celeste. He merely watched them fall. First, it was one politely disagreeing with Lyon's idea – reviving the demon king would get them what they wanted, and Lyon had him killed for disrespecting the crown.

Another woman had been clumsy and knocked into him by tripping. Lyon gently helped her right himself – Celeste had seen a glimpse then, of the correct prince – before banishing her to the dungeons for some arbitrary reason Celeste no longer recalls.

His eyes flutter closed. Before this mess happened, Lyon would often tell him that he was his most trusted researcher, that Celeste was brilliant.

_4\. Please kill him._

Celeste has a knife hidden in his robes. He keeps telling himself that slashing the prince's throat would end this farce, but he cannot bring himself to do it. Though the prince is controlled by a hideous... _fascimile_ , it would still be the prince's throat cut, the prince's blood staining his hands.

Celeste thinks he could kill any one else. But not Lyon.

_5\. The sacred stones must not be_

The door opens and in walks the subject of Celeste's notes. His hand clenches instinctively, and he curls the paper into a tight ball. Several corners poke painfully into the flesh of his palm, but he will endure it.

“There you are!” Lyon's voice chimes amiably from the doorway. Celeste straightens and offers a submissive smile.

“You were looking for me, Your Imperial Highness?” he responds cordially.

Before, Lyon was satisfied with 'Your Highness' because it was shorter, and 'my prince' because he was vain. 'Sire' would work in a pinch, and alone, together, Celeste was allowed to call him Lyon, though he could never bring himself to.

'Your Highness' had been the first mistake Celeste made when Lyon had changed.

“I had something to discuss with you.”

Lyon's eyes scan the rooms. Its his quarters, or was his quarters when he was still the true Prince Lyon. This man is different, and Celeste needs to remind himself as he acts, lest he forget.

“You were cleaning.” It isn't a question, though Celeste knows he's meant to answer.

“Yes, Your Imperial Highness, you said you were dissatisfied with the room, so I thought it best to tidy it for you.”

A normal prince would ask if that were not a task for maids or servants, but the prince before Celeste now knows them all to be dead by his hand. Celeste is, by far, not the only one left when it comes to those who work for the crown, but he boasts the unique position of having been one of Prince Lyon's most trusted confidants, a fact now that has kept a sword hung dangling above his head since the change.

The prince's lips tug in a smile. “Fool,” he chides. If it were a word that the prince of old would have ever used, it would nearly sound like him in the soft, kind way it is spoken. “I meant I am taking a new room. You should have moved my things.”

“My sincerest apologies, Your Imperial Highness.”

Celeste has to name his title in every sentence or Lyon will get testy. He has to bow now, as he apologizes, or it will not suffice. He knows the rules – he's seen others die for them.

“Let's take a walk,” Lyon offers.

Celeste's blood runs cold. The last person to have an invitation like that from Lyon was flayed alive in the gardens, left out to rot in the summer sun. Celeste and another researcher found her body, haplessly thrown within the flowers. The lillies had been white before her red blood stained them for the rest of the season.

But to deny the invitation is to welcome death immediately, and Lyon does not kill with an audience. The safe route is to offer a cordial smile and hurry to Lyon's side with a murmured thank-you that sounds far more grateful than Celeste has been in the past year.

Lyon walks slowly and carries himself with such grace. This is unchanged. He has a meloncholy smile placed on his face, and his eyes always seem sad, in a way. If Celeste doesn't meet them, the illusion is perfect.

The main difference between then and now is that Lyon does not fill the air with brief conversation. Celeste merely follows him, two steps behind his left shoulder as always.

It's a rather long walk, and Celeste becomes nervous once he recognizes the path they take. Once they leave the east wing, they go left, down the hallway with all the portraits, past the stained glass windows. They walk behind the throne room, enter the west wing, and then take a back stairway to the second floor. Lyon stops outside the door to Celeste's chambers and glances at him with some unknown slyness before opening the door and gesturing Celeste to enter inside.

His room has been torn apart. All the relevant reading has been stacked neatly on the bed and all else has been thrown asunder, in some cases torn open. Stacks of notes have been toppled, ink has been spilled, and the chair to Celeste's desk – the one luxury, the one set of furniture that decorates the room aside from his cot – has been toppled.

“You've been busy,” Lyon says darkly. “Look at all those interesting titles.”

It's a cruel joke. All the books on arcane knowledge that passed through the researchers' hands have been slashed in decades past during a revival of the church's strength, when Lyon's great-great-grandmother decided some knowledge was not worth knowing.

It was the heroes that slashed the titles. They never knew how many tomes had been burnt.

Celeste's voice is caught in his throat. Lyon knows his research into possession. A quick glance at the room again proves his original notes on the subject are missing.

“Y-your Imperial Highness...” he begins, shakily. “Did you burn them? My notes?”

Lyon laughs, and the sound is too light and amused. It's out of place, it stabs into Celeste's gut. His stomach twists with an invisible pain. “No, no, they were far too amusing. I meant to read them over, but you know how busy I've been.”

“Of course...” Celeste murmurs.

A silence settles, and Celeste can barely bring himself to breathe. Lyon regards him curiously – he can see so from the corner of his eyes, and he dares not bring his face to meet the “prince's”.

“It's death for this,” Lyon comments matter-of-factly.

 _At last_.

“Will you go peacefully?”

“Yes... my prince.”

A sharp crack of laughter splits Lyon's lips and he reaches over suddenly, grabbing Celeste's wrist painfully rough. The tension on his muscles causes his fingers to uncurl, and his little note falls lamely to the ground.

Lyon bends to retrieve it and smooths it against his thigh. He spends a split second reading it before he makes another amused guffaw.

“Oh, _oh, Knoll_...”

Celeste straightens. He's Knoll now – he's been Knoll since the thing took his prince's body and decided he was nothing but another thing to toy with. The moniker was a threat from the start, he knew his death was upon him _eventually_ , but it had been nearly a year since then. He'd endured the name for so long, but now, really, it was the threat being fulfilled.

“You thought this would help some one?” Lyon asks. It's rhetorical, which is good, because he isn't sure he could find the voice to answer.

Lyon tugs his arm roughly, dragging him out of the room. He's possessed of an inhuman strength, since the change happened. Knoll has no hope of escape.

A bell rings distantly.

It feels like years pass that Lyon is dragging Knoll to the dungeons. A guard offers to take Knoll there, but Lyon brushes him off and insists he does it himself – “I'm trying to be strong,” he explains in such a gentle, subdued tone, that Celeste would believe he were truly Lyon, if his fingernails weren't biting his wrist.

He's thrown into the cell with such force that he catches himself with his hands and barely manages to stand. The door slams behind him, and he can hear Lyon set all the locks.

“Stand up, Knoll,” he commands through the small window on the front of the door.

Knoll obeys, and steps towards the door, because he knows his prince, and he knows this beast inside.

“What do you think?” Lyon asks. His eyes are half-lidded, and he reaches his hand into the cell. His fingers curl around a lock of Knoll's hair, twisting playfully. He can hear his own heart beating rapidly in his chest, but he can't quite place if it's Knoll's fear or Celeste's affections. “You deserve a wonderful life here in the dungeons. I was considering three to six months, but I am _so_ excited to kill you myself... Hmm... It will be easier then, I suppose.”

Knoll has no words. Celeste leans his head gently to the side, his jaw brushes against Lyon's fingers.

Lyon giggles. Celeste finds it a lovely sound.

“Two months then?”

“A-as it is Your Imperial Highness' will,” Knoll murmurs.

“It's a date.”

Lyon leaves, and the man inside the cell shivers for a reason he can't place.

A month passes, and Lyon returns only to declare he's moving Knoll's execution up by two weeks. Knoll swears he hears a bell chime through each day to follow.

The day before he is to die, a helmeted soldier comes to inform Knoll that he won't die for another three months, while Lyon is away. Knoll accepts this.

They begin to starve him in the cell, but he endures... Somehow. For some reason.

Another soldier informs him that the date has been pushed up with Lyon's sudden arrival. Knoll is only glad that the end is nearer.

The day that sees the locks undone to his cell, Knoll is little more than a pile of robes in the corner. He rises shakily, dares a few tentative steps forward, and the light from the door blinds him.

When the intruder introduces himself as Prince Ephraim, Knoll scowls. He calls himself Knoll.

Lyon is transformed, so Knoll is too. Celeste cannot live in a world without his prince. Knoll is barely managing.

Knoll trips as he follows the Renaisian prince out of the dungeons. He thinks bitterly, as Ephraim offers an arm for support ( and he denies it ), that Knoll has no business living as Celeste dies. But Celeste cannot live without Lyon, and so what's left is this husk named Knoll.

Knoll can offer Grado's sacred treasures to Ephraim, in his quest to defeat Lyon. Gleipnir, stolen from the throne room, can no longer be used by Lyon for whatever purpose. Celeste couldn't do that.

Knoll can meet General Duessel in the eyes, and tell the legendary Obsidian of horrors, wretched acts committed not only by his hand, but by the beloved jewel of Grado – the kindhearted Prince Lyon. Duessel sweats under Knoll's level gaze. Celeste would shrivel under Duessel's.

Perhaps it has been a metamorphosis for the longest time, but Celeste is gone for good, dashed from Knoll's thoughts forever, on the day that Celeste cries because Lyon dies in Ephraim's arms.

 


End file.
